


(sometimes you have to) run before you walk

by schweet_heart



Series: Avengers Fic [9]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Fuck first fall in love later, Fuckbuddies, M/M, Mutual Pining, Porn with Feelings, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, it's complicated - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 18:01:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It occurs to Tony that he's been doing things ass-backwards for most of his life, taking things apart before he knows how to put them back together again, and the familiarity would be comforting if it weren't also terrifying. </p><p>Or: Steve and Tony don't get along, except for when they do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(sometimes you have to) run before you walk

I.

 

They fuck first, brutal and filthy against the workshop wall, Steve's mouth at his throat and his hands gripping Tony's waist so tightly he knows it's going to leave a mark. All Tony can think is _holy shit, I'm fucking Captain America_ and _how the hell did this happen_ because if he'd thought about it at all he'd have thought Steve was a wine-and-roses type of guy, date first, fuck never, and they don't even get along that well, do they; all they do is push and pull, push and pull, and maybe that's a kind of fucking anyway, the way they are together. Tony's fingernails are scraping Steve's back and he's biting Steve's collarbone hard enough to bruise, but all Steve says is “Yes,” and “ _Tony_ ,” and there's a level of frustration in the way he pulls him closer, like it's never going to be enough.

 

Everything else comes after. It occurs to Tony that he's been doing things ass-backwards for most of his life, taking things apart before he knows how to put them back together again, and the familiarity would be comforting if it weren't also terrifying. This was supposed to be just another fight between them, another test, like a game of chicken to see who would cave first. Steve had said, “There are a few things in this century I'm still getting used to,” and Tony had said, “Like what?” and when Steve said “Bisexuality” he'd almost choked because _Captain fucking America_ okay, but then Steve had looked at him with his open, Boy-Scout face and said: “I, uh. I want try it.”

 

“What?”

 

“Having...you know. Sex. If you want to. It's legal now, right?”

 

Tony's brain was screaming at him that this must be some kind of parallel universe because no way did gifts fall from the clear blue sky like that, but his mouth, which always could operate on its own, said, “You're not going to make me marry you first?”

 

Which. Well. _So_ not the point.

 

Fortunately Steve had just grinned at him, hooking his thumbs through Tony's belt-loops and pulling him closer, and Captain America really shouldn't have been able to look like that, as if he were not only capable of having dirty thoughts but was, in fact, having them right now. About _him_.

 

“Not if you don't want to,” he'd murmured into Tony's ear, and hey, it wasn't like he'd needed much convincing anyway, it was _Captain America,_ if there was anyone guaranteed to still respect you in the morning it would be Steve. It's not as if he even _liked_ the guy that much, however attractive he found him. No strings, no baggage; just sex. He could deal with that.

 

Now that he thinks about it, Tony has been out of his depth right from the start.

 

 

 

The weirdest part is how it should be weird but isn't. Steve may be a novice but he learns _fast_ , and he's enthusiastic about it, too, not the blushing prude Tony once took him for (“Tony,” Steve grins, when he mentions this, “I was a soldier, not a monk.”). At first it's all fumbling fingers and bumped noses and Steve so typically apologetic that Tony has to laugh and tell him to shut up, okay, shut up, listen, if you go _that_ way it'll work better, and stop holding back so much, he's not going to snap in half – but after that it kind of gets easier.

 

“I don't want to hurt you,” Steve tells him earnestly. And Tony looks up at him, at the way the lamplight gilds his golden hair and his honest face and thinks _I'm so going to regret this_ and says, “Rogers, for fuck's sake, are we doing this or not?” with just the right amount of challenge in his voice to get himself shoved against the wall. And _this_ is more what he's expected, it's push and pull again but on a different level, both of them playing dirty and liking it, his shirt coming off and then his jeans, and then Steve, just Steve, who is beautiful in spite of everything.

 

Tony still doesn't know how this happened exactly but he's not the kind of guy to look a gift horse in the mouth. For now, it doesn't have to be much more than this: watching Steve put his still-untried body through its paces, learning what makes him arch his back and moan and dig his fingers into Tony's skin, listening to the way his breathing stutters and stops when he does that thing with his tongue.

 

Afterwards, they end up face to face, Steve's hand on the arc reactor flexing as he comes, and _now_ he looks shy which would be funny except he's also saying “Thank you” like it's a favour and _shit_ , Tony realises he's forgotten one crucial element in the whole affair: in order to be friends with benefits, you have to be friends first, and they're not. They never have been.

 

 

II.

 

Steve is – Steve; himself, completely, and if he's an anachronism now he must have been an ordinary man once, a concept which frankly boggles the mind. It's not that Tony's been stalking him, exactly, but sometimes he can't help _looking_ , and he sees how on the surface there's the Steve who would rescue kittens and help little old ladies across the street and glare at you if you said _damn_ and especially _fuck_ , because _can it, Stark, it's unprofessional_ – but underneath there's someone else, too, the Steve who draws nudes and loves motorcycles and can't stick to the speed limit to save his life, the Steve who went to a bar after his best friend died and didn't get drunk, but wanted to.

 

It becomes a game of sorts. Steve looks at Tony when he thinks he won't notice, and Tony looks at him right back, pretending not to be paying attention but secretly tracking Rogers' movements whenever they're close to a reflective surface, keeping him in sight out of the corner of his eye.

 

 _Watching you watching me_ , he thinks, and it's funny, in a strange, heady way that has little to do with humour and everything to do with the fact that he knows, _knows_ it's going to happen again, and that he wants it to. It's like they've crossed some unspoken line or flipped a switch and suddenly they can't unsee one another, even though they never actually look each other in the face. The tension builds between them like a thunderhead, close and cloying until it breaks, and Steve pushes him down onto the bed like it's the first time with his hands shaking, Tony laughing against his skin.

 

 

 

The thing is, Steve has _rules_ about sex, which should probably not surprise him but somehow it does anyway. He likes to touch but not to kiss; to push but never to be pushed back. And okay, Tony can work with that, if that's all he's got to work with, and for a while that's it, that's all they are. A few weeks in, Tony figures out how to game the system: the more risks they take, the hotter the sex. The closer the city comes to being wiped off the map, the more likely Steve will drag him by the collar into the nearest supply closet and fuck him senseless. All in all, those are good odds, until one day it's just Steve who walks too close to the razor's edge and suddenly it isn't fun anymore.

 

He manhandles Steve into his room almost before the de-briefing has ended, arm across his chest and knee between his thighs, pinning Steve against the wall.

 

“Tony, what – ?”

 

“My turn,” Tony says simply, and Steve's mouth clicks shut, his pupils flaring outward like ink spots in blue water.

 

Tony crowds in close to him, yanking down the waistband of his pants and gripping his cock with his free hand, feeling the member swell and harden in his grasp. Steve's palms are pressed against the wood, fingers curled like he's trying to find purchase, and Tony's teeth scrape the exposed flesh of his throat, his other hand tangled roughly in Steve's hair as he tugs him closer. Whatever it is between them now has developed a life of its own, and Steve seems to feel it too because he makes a sound of approval deep in the back of his throat that goes straight to Tony's dick. Steve reaches for him blindly, his hands on Tony's hips, then waist, then up under his t-shirt and against his skin, and Tony reaches back with his whole body, caught up entirely by the desire to touch and be touched.

 

It's over too quickly. He can tell when Steve is close, the muscles of his thighs shuddering with tension. His eyes are shut tight, as if not looking could erase the fact that they've just blown straight past his carefully erected boundaries and into new territory. Tony knows he's pushing things too far, too fast, but Steve's hands on his body are just as desperate so he does it anyway.

 

“ _Look at me_ ,” he growls, and Steve does. Whatever he sees in Tony's eyes is enough to tip him over the edge and he comes with a shout, the noise muffled beneath Tony's kiss as he swallows the sound whole.

 

 

 

When Tony was a child he'd lived with Captain America's ghost and when he was an adult he lived in Captain America's shadow, and now that he's an Avenger he's living with the man himself, and he can't decide if that's better or worse. All he knows is anyone who can locate and exploit his greatest weakness within days of having met him, who can peel back his skin so easily ( _big man inside a suit of armour; take that away and what are you?_ ), anyone that ruthless has to be a little like him, deep down, no matter what the old news reels say. Wasn't that how the past had always been, a layer of glitz and gold to hide the deeper currents beneath?

 

He thinks about this as Steve wipes himself down and leaves without speaking, wondering if that's why even before now he'd had every shadow in Steve's face memorised, had already known the sound of his footsteps without turning, the rhythm of his breathing. Tony's used to unrequited love of one kind or another; he's spent the majority of his life loving those who failed to love him back for whatever reason – he's an asshole, they're an asshole, everyone's an asshole, asshole – so he's not _expecting_ anything else, it's just. Captain America. Who would have thought he'd be the type to fuck and run?

 

 

 

 

He promises himself he's going to handle this, handle it _better_ , dammit, because Steve is not Pepper and Pepper was the love of his life, so of course it's going to be easier. Only it's not. It's like the universe and his subconscious are ganging up on him in the most awful way possible, because now he can't even look at Rogers without remembering the taste of his skin between throat and collarbone, the sound he makes when you run a fingernail lightly across his balls; can't watch him fight or clap his shoulder without something dark and festering in him clamouring to make itself known.

 

He'd like to call it hatred, but it isn't, because he also notices the way Steve's eyes crinkle when he smiles and how lost he is, sometimes, in a world too small for him, the way he's always so careful because he's so much stronger than everyone else and it would be so easy for him to break them. Tony's already broken and has been for what feels like forever, but sometimes he thinks he could be fixed again by such gentleness.

 

It doesn't matter. They go back to being not-friends and not-fucking and it's familiar but familiar isn't _right_ , and Tony decides he must be really, really dense, or maybe just a masochist, because he had to have seen this coming; he had to have seen the freight train barreling down on him yet he did nothing to get out of its way.

 

 

III.

 

There may or may not be Steve, but there is alcohol, and there is work, and there is saving the world on a weekly basis, for which he is equal parts guilty and grateful. Tony enjoys the flying best, pushing the suit to see how fast it can respond, leaping off skyscrapers and counting in his head (ten – twenty – fifty – a hundred) until the very last moment, swooping away inches from the ground.

 

Steve looks at him sometimes like he's dangerous, a pinched line between his eyes, and there are arguments with angry gestures and shouting and concerned faces which Tony ignores because it's not even any of his business and as for the rest of them, they can't talk, he knows they're just as hooked as he is.

 

He works hard. He plays harder. He's not entirely sure what day it is at any given time, but that's par for the course.

 

 

 

“Tony,” Bruce asks him, once. “Are you all right?”

 

“Peachy keen,” Tony responds, because he is, okay, he's totally fine. “Why wouldn't I be?”

 

“I don't know,” says Bruce. He's looking at Tony like he can see right through him, so Tony keeps on smiling, a grin that's full of teeth, because that's the best way he knows to blind the opposition. “Pepper's concerned because you're actually doing your paperwork and I know Steve's been worried about you. He thinks you're pushing yourself too hard.”

 

“If he's so worried about me, maybe he should talk to me himself.”

 

“Maybe he's scared to,” Bruce says. “He thinks you're punishing him. Or punishing yourself because of him. He doesn't want to make things worse.”

 

“For fuck's sake.” And Tony's _angry_ now, because how dare they, all of them, band together to protect him from himself. He's not stupid. He's not suicidal, either, because Steve or no Steve he doesn't have the luxury of checking out early, even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't. Much. Often. “I'm not made of china, Bruce. It's not like I'm going to fall to pieces just because I want something more and he doesn't. It's life. It happens. I'm nearly forty, I'm too old to think that a broken heart is the end of the world.”

 

Bruce has stopped working and is staring at him, and it could be that's awe on his face, but Tony isn't sure.

 

“What?” he snaps.

 

“Just contemplating one of the great mysteries of the universe,” Bruce says, his tone mild. “Namely, the way two people can look at the same thing and come to utterly different conclusions about it, even when both of them are really smart.”

 

“Wow, you're being especially cryptic today. Did you get an extra helping of vagueness and mystery with your cornflakes this morning?”

 

“I thought I was pretty clear, but if it helps I'll say it again in words of one syllable. He cares about you, Tony. And you care about him. I'm sure if you just talk to each other – ”

 

“Not gonna happen.”

 

“Tony – ”

 

“I mean it. Stay out of it, Bruce.”

 

“All right,” Bruce says, and that's the good thing about Bruce, he doesn't _push_. “But I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

 

 

IV.

 

Tony can count the good things in his life on the fingers of one hand: Pepper, Rhodey, Iron Man, JARVIS. The jury's still out on the Avengers, but at the very least they give him context – something to measure up to. And maybe, way down somewhere at the bottom of the bottle, Tony's just a little bit angry about that, because Steve was supposed to be better, supposed to _make things_ better, because they could have been something brilliant and he'd gone and shot it all to hell.

 

“I'm not angry with you,” he lies, when Steve finally turns up in the workshop late one night and stares at him like he's expecting some kind of confession. “I'm angry in general. Sometimes you just get in the way.”

 

“That's not what I'm here about,” says Steve, and Christ, he's folding his arms, it must be serious. “It's about your drinking.”

 

“Correction: it's about none of your business.”

 

Steve is glaring. They're back to how they were before, push-me pull-you, fuck-me fuck-you, and Tony thinks somewhat hysterically that if they were ever yoked together they would only pull in opposite directions, even if it meant both of them starving to death.

 

On second thought, maybe he is a little drunk.

 

“You're out of control, Tony.”

 

“Out of _your_ control, maybe. It's possible that's the point. If I even had to have a point, which I don't, because hi! Legal adult, I can drink if I want to.”

 

“Do you even hear yourself?” A few steps closer; he's dropped the teetotaler routine now, arms low and reaching. “What's going on with you lately?”

 

“Hell if I know.”

 

Steve stops, and he's so close that Tony can't repress the irresistible need to touch him. It's probably a bad idea but fuck it he's the king of bad ideas so he leans in anyway, and it's not a kiss so much as it is a frustration of lips and warmth and teeth, both of them breathing each other and nothing else and everything silent. Tony's fingers curl angry marks into Steve's skin as he bites down on his lower lip, his nails leaving tiny crescent moons that look like bruises, Steve's mouth wide and open and wet. Then Steve pulls away.

 

“Don't,” he says, voice shaking.

 

So Tony doesn't.

 

 

 

The thing is, Tony _gets it_ , in ways he thinks maybe Steve doesn't really understand; he knows more than he ever wanted to about what it's like to lose so much you can't reach out and take the good things when they're right in front of you. Of all the things they could have had in common, this is the one he'd least happy about and yet the most inevitable. He wonders if maybe that's why he had pushed Steve so far; to make him realise that this wasn't just a game, force him to see how much he wanted it. Or maybe he's just an angry, spiteful, bitter old man – some days, it's hard to tell the difference.

 

 

 

Steve keeps looking, though, when he thinks Tony isn't watching. Tony can feel it on his skin, like the buzz of static electricity, making the hair on his arms prickle and stand straight up. There are little aborted movements between them, empty gestures where before they would have touched one another's shoulders or wrists or hands, and the missing moments pile up until sometimes all Tony can see when he looks at Steve is everything they aren't to each other, everything they could be.

 

He goes to Malibu and stays there, telling himself it's not sulking if it's for business, fooling no one. Pepper fixes him with a look that plainly says _talk to him_ every time she comes down to the workshop to find him, papers in hand, other hand fisted on her hip and her eyebrow raised. She knows him too well, even now, with the old wound of their break-up still between them like scar tissue, and he replies with his blandest expression, smoothing the skin across his cheeks the way he knows she hates, smiling with only his mouth and not his eyes. _Who me?_ His face says, and she rolls her eyes at him but doesn't press, dropping a folder full of contracts and requisition forms on his desk and leaving before he can protest – her preferred form of retaliation for his excesses.

 

Tony has no idea what Steve does while he's away. He thinks about hacking the Tower's security feed a few times, imagines watching Steve go through is morning routine, oblivious. The thought holds only minimal appeal. He doesn't want an image of Steve, he wants the real thing, warts and all; wants the way Steve frowns when he swears in public; the way he turns his coffee cup in his hands when he's nervous; the way he smells after sex. Wants, specifically, the sound Steve had made when he came just from looking into Tony's eyes. Just wants, really.

 

Finally, he receives an email from Bruce that says simply, _I told you so_ , and Tony is many things but self-restrained isn't one of them. There's every chance Bruce is just seeing what he wants to see, what he _thinks_ is happening between them, every chance Steve doesn't need him at all; but on the other hand there's the way Tony's stomach drops at the thought of seeing him again and that itch under his skin, like he can feel Steve watching him from here.

 

He goes back. Bruce greets him at the door and doesn't say anything, and nor does Steve, and the kick in his gut when Steve meets his eyes for the first time in forever is probably just his imagination, except that it's entirely not.

 

 

V.

 

This is Tony's life, so of course things can never be that easy; he can never get something that good without Fate taking her pound of flesh, and ironically in the moment his reaction is not surprise but disappointment. He wasn't going to let it _be_ like this, goddammit, he was going to try harder, do better, and fuck if that isn't the worst part; that Fate turned out to be such a bitch. They're called out on a routine mission, not even a doomsday device just some asshole with unexpected superpowers and enough of a Napoleonic complex to launch an armada, but turns out the kid can really pack a punch and he's gunning for Steve like he has a hankering for some All-American barbecue. Tony runs the numbers even as he's moving and he knows his ass is toast, but it's not as if he has a choice – it's him or Captain America, and anyone with half a brain can see how that equation is going to come out.

 

It's a good thing he took the hit, really; the blast is so strong the armour can't compensate, the joints cracking open like shells over an open fire. Tony just has time to think that Steve never would have survived it before he's flat on his back on the concrete, skyscrapers exploding above him and pain like a living thing crawling out of his chest. He's not sure where the next few seconds go; his brain's stuck replaying his greatest hits like a godawful cliché and he's struggling to breathe past the taste of regret. The next thing he knows there's blood in his mouth and his faceplate is up, Steve's hands splayed on his chest like he can reach through the armour to put him back together, Steve's voice begging him to still be alive.

 

“Sorry, Cap,” he says, and laughs, because seriously, dying fucking hurts, and so does the look on Steve's face: too much, too soon and too little, too late. “No can do.”

 

 

 

Death seems to stick to superheroes like grease to teflon. He wakes up in the hospital with tubes coming out of his arms and a fresh bandage on his chest, and Steve sitting beside his bed with his head in his hands, still smelling of smoke and his hair the colour of ashes. When Tony meets his gaze Steve makes the sort of sound Tony imagines a basketful of kittens might make when they found out someone had run over their mother.

 

“Tony,” he says. “Oh God, Tony, I--”

 

“What?” Tony says, all mock alarm. “Is it my face? It's my face, isn't it? My brilliant good looks, gone forever.”

 

Steve's laughter is choked and full of things that will have to be said at some point, but he's not looking like an orphaned kitten anymore, which Tony thinks can only be a good sign.

 

“There's nothing wrong with your face,” Steve tells him, and his voice still shakes. “You're going to be fine.”

 

“Am I?”

 

Steve ducks his head; smiles. “You're going to be just fine,” he repeats, and Tony looks at him, at the dirt and exhaustion all over his face, and thinks maybe he will be.

 

 

 

They fuck last, too. This time there are no surprises, no hidden agendas: just them. Steve's fingers are rough-gentle against his skin, touching each of the scars on his chest, outlining his nipples with tiny circles. He nudges his nose into the hollows of Tony's neck and breathes, not quite kissing him, and Tony lets his head fall back, hooking his legs around Steve's waist and drawing him deeper.

 

It's not the best sex Tony's ever had, because they're both wounded and raw and still wary of each other, but it's certainly the most earnest, which is just as good in its own way. He can feel Steve's hands lingering against the still-pink crescent of his most recent wound, fingers tracing the puckered line of it, feels his skin turning in on itself as if simultaneously drawing closer and trying to shrink away as the movement brushes the hair on his chest in the wrong direction. He folds one of his own hands over Steve's, stilling it, twining their fingers together in a wordless gesture – _not your fault, don't apologise_ – and kisses him again, long and languid and slow, until Steve's body arches against his with a helpless sound and Tony grins, reaching for him with sure hands.

 

Later, in the dark, Steve touches his face.

 

“You want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asks, quiet. Tony looks at him, takes in his tousled hair, the hopeful light in his eyes.

 

“You mean like a date?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“I thought we had already skipped the wining and dining phase of this relationship.”

 

Steve makes a non-committal noise. “Maybe we shouldn't have.”

 

“Maybe you're right.” Tony smirks. “But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I will sue you for slander.”

 

Steve laughs and rolls over, burying his face against Tony's shoulder, and something soft settles into Tony's chest, the same thud-click he feels when the ARC reactor slots into place. They always did do things the wrong way round, sex and love and anger all mixed up, so it's with a supreme sense of irony that he pulls Steve's head up to his for a kiss that's more teeth than tenderness, and if he chooses to mouth _I love you_ against his lips, it's fine. It's completely, absolutely fine.

 

Because Steve is kissing him back, and that's a hell of a way to go.

 


End file.
